Over the last year, debate over whether it is okay to ask (or, in some cases, demand) a stranger to switch plane seats with you has heated up.
As most major airlines have now made seat preselection a "perk" for higher traveler classes, many families with kids are increasingly left separated on busy flights — a situation that has prompted much traveler frustration as well as endless thinkpieces on whether fellow passengers should be guilted into switching seats to accommodate.
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The situation once again came to a head when a jewelry company CEO posted a TikTok video describing how she refused to switch seats with a mother of two on a Delta Airlines (DAL) -) flight from Cincinnati to San Jose.
Watch the entire saga here.
CEO's Seat-Switching Rant Resonates
Tammy Nelson, who founded the Ohio-based jewelry brand CONQUERing, was going on a business trip to California when she entered the plane and saw a woman sitting in the window seat written on her ticket.
"What would you do?" Nelson asked her 270,000 followers in a caption posted over a video of herself in the plane. "I got on the plane and a woman was sitting in my seat and when I mentioned it to her, she said, 'Oh, you want to sit here? I thought we could switch because these are my kids' (she points to the two seats next to mine)."
Nelson reportedly told the woman that she's "happy to switch" as long as it's another window seat but refused to do so for the middle one the woman had because she gets motion sickness and specifically paid for the window seat to help with it. The mother ultimately returned to her seat but, according to Nelson, was "super annoyed."
While only six seconds long, the video quickly went viral — in the three days after posting, it was viewed more than two million times and received over 66,000 likes.
Seat Switching Is Another Traveling Annoyance
Many commenters applauded Nelson for standing her ground and not giving up the seat that she had booked.
"The amount [sic] of families who aren't paying to select seats together is mind-blowing!" TikTok user Kelly Gifford Garcia wrote in a comment with more than 8,400 upvotes. "You were 100% right not to give up your seat."
"Don't feel guilty!" wrote nutritionist Alissa Spears.
While the mother's assumption was what fueled anger and support, the issue of separating families is generally more controversial — many point out that, in an effort to get more profit, airlines are increasingly squeezing travelers and shifting the expectation to "be nice" and give up a seat on fellow travelers.
